South By So What?

Why it’s no match for Austin's local music scene.

The South by Southwest (SxSW) Festival landed in Austin March 10 and will idle here through March 19. Many tens of thousands of people from out of town come to listen to a couple of thousand bands who are also from out of town. Both sides in these events may think they’re enjoying the best of Austin, but they couldn’t be more wrong.

There’s a reason Austin musicians sometimes dismiss the festival as “South by So What.” The gathering’s whole approach runs contrary to the essence of the city. My wife, a lover of live music, makes the astute observation that in Austin, there’s almost no barrier between performing musicians and their audiences, and certainly less of one than in other places.

That goes to the core of why live music is so good here during the other 51 weeks of the year. Most of the time, musicians and their audiences here are in this together. Indeed, often they’re the same people. Austin is where a lot of musicians live between tours, and the city’s performing spaces are where they hone their songs and licks, catch up with old friends and see some new talents. You never know when you might need a new lead guitarist.

It is not uncommon in Austin for a performer to call someone up from the audience. Sometimes this is by pre-arrangement, but often it clearly is not. For example, the singer and bassist Bonnie Whitmore in recent months has had a terrific, lively residency at the Continental Club’s Gallery, featuring her own talents as a writer (“[No One Really Wants to] Fuck With Sad Girls”) and musician, but also highlighting those of an array of her friends, with a different one sitting in each week to swap songs and stories. But one week her invited guest failed to show up, so Whitmore gazed across the room and asked if the Americana singer James McMurtry, sitting at the bar, would join her. I couldn’t see him, but he must have shaken his head, because next she summoned her sister Eleanor from the audience, and we all were given an impromptu show by the Whitmore Sisters.

At another Gallery show, the bass player for Emily Gimble said with frustration that there was something amiss with a tuning key on his instrument. Gimble leaned into the microphone and asked gravely, “Is there a luthier in the house?” Of course there was, and she knew it. For some reason the craftsman had brought a small tool kit with him—I’m guessing this wasn’t the first time his emergency aid was requested. He took out some tiny screwdrivers and soon put the double bass right.

Sometimes relations between players and spectators are close indeed. When the eerily-voiced Jimmie Dale Gilmore was appearing one night at the Gallery, he mentioned a book of poetry. The woman in front of us exclaimed, “I gave you that book!” It turned out that she was his wife, and that she was sitting with three other members of his family. Another time, at a Christine Albert show at El Mercado, my wife noticed Gilmore dancing with his wife. A few minutes later he clambered onto the stage to contribute a song.

Another time at the Gallery, the singer—I can’t remember who it was—saw someone in the audience and said, with a bit of surprise, “Aren’t you playing the Saxon tonight?” Yes, the woman responded, but not for another hour. So before performing at one place that night, she was in the audience in another.

That Saxon Pub, over on South Lamar, is a bit more formal, partly I suspect because it offers multiple shows almost every day of the week, and the schedule must be followed. But a woman dancing to the left of our table there one night got noticed by the band leader onstage, and invited up. It was the rocker Patrice Pike, and she belted out a fine song.

Even the big venues sometimes break the fourth wall. My wife remembers being at the Paramount for an Alejandro Escovedo show when someone in the balcony shouted, “Al!” Escovedo stopped what he was doing and looked up. The shouter then said, “Al, we love you!”

One of my favorite Austin regular shows is the Purgatory Players, in which some of Austin’s finest guitarists meet each Sunday morning at 11:30 at El Mercado South’s Backstage to play for each other and also raise money for the Central Texas Food Bank. For my wife and I, attending these shows has become our version of church, albeit one where the communion wafer is a taco and the sacrificial wine a Bloody Mary.

The Purgatory show has institutionalized the appearance of guest players. Every week, at least one and sometimes several people come up from the audience to play a song. The regular Players—usually these days they are Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Rich Brotherton, and Guy Forsyth—are so adept as accompanists that they can join right in with a guest’s song they have never heard before and make it sound lively and polished. Before they leave the stage the guests usually mention where they’ll next be playing around town. In this way, my wife and I have been introduced to dozens of performers, some of them old hands like David Pulkingham and Woody Russell, others up-and-comers such as Shayna Sands, a young woman with a powerful voice and, apparently, a direct line to the soul of Leonard Cohen.

I hope Austin audiences appreciate how lucky they are. Where else can you see a moment like the one I once witnessed at another Bonnie Whitmore show at the Gallery. A man walked in just as she was finishing her lovely song “Superficial World of Love.” Quick disappointment crossed his face. “I missed ‘Superficial’?” he exclaimed. Then he had a suggestion: “Can you play it again?” He seemed to be kidding—but I don’t think he would have been surprised if Whitmore had agreed to that unusual request.

I don’t think you’ll see that sort of exchange at South By. Even if you are wearing an access lanyard that states “HBO Max Platinum Plus.”